


voicemails

by dilkirani



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Post 4x06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 03:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8516959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilkirani/pseuds/dilkirani
Summary: When Jemma finishes her mission, she has five voicemails from Fitz and a call from Mace that changes everything.





	

_“Hey, Jemma. Look, can you call me back? I know… maybe you don’t want to talk but I’m gonna be out here for longer than I thought and I want…_

_Just call me back.”_

_—_

_“Jemma, this cold-shoulder thing is unfair. I know you’re angry, and I’m sorry. I really am. But can we please just talk about it? I know you’d rather do this in person… I would, too. But things here are… it’s complicated. Call me back.”_

_—_

_“Okay, I’m starting to get really worried. I haven’t heard from you in ages and no one knows where you are. I’m sure you’re busy with some top-secret project for the Director, but I’d feel better if I could hear your voice. Or text me that all these calls are annoying you. Something._

_—Yeah, all right, I’m coming! Bloody wankers._

_Shite, sorry. This has been a day. Please call me back.”_

_—_

_“I know when you listen to all these you’re gonna be annoyed at how needy I am and I’ll be embarrassed, but it’s not exactly the first time we thought everything was fine and it wasn’t. I feel bloody useless. I love you, Jemma. Okay? I love you so much and I’m sorry I kept anything from you._

_I need your security clearance to access some redacted documents. You’ll love it—it’s to do with Peggy Carter! So yeah, call me back and I can fill you in and we can talk about… everything.”_

_—_

_“I’m sorry that I hurt you, Jemma. If… if you don’t want to talk that’s okay, but just let me know you’re all right because I can’t handle this again…_

_Jem, please. I love you. I love you more than anything and nothing is more important to me than making things right with you. Please call me.”_

_—_

Jemma immediately sees the notifications when her phone is finally handed back: (Fitz 10 missed calls) (5 voicemails). Frowning, she starts to play the first message when the phone buzzes in her hand.

“Sir? I just finished up here, what’s—”

It’s almost comedic, the way her mouth falls open and she stutters to a stop. It’s almost comedic, but it’s not, because there’s nothing funny about the way her universe collapses in on itself, the way gravity resists all scientific understanding and releases her from the ground.

Her brain fizzes, a million thoughts clarifying into one single image burned against the backs of her eyes: a hand held up. A unity she should have reached for but didn’t.

This, then, is how her world ends: with science and magic and an apology left unaccepted.

++

“But why won’t you just listen to them?” Daisy asks, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder against her.

Jemma runs a finger across the bottom of her phone’s screen, still lit up with five voicemail notifications. “It’s Schrödinger’s voicemail. If I don’t listen to them, Fitz is both in love with me and not at the same time.”

Daisy turns to Jemma, who avoids her eyes. “Okay, I know I’m a highschool dropout, but that doesn’t make any sense.”

Jemma stares for a second longer at the image on her home screen—a picture she’d gotten Mack to take of her and Fitz before they’d left for a date one night. Fitz had rolled his eyes, but his smile was breathtaking all the same. She blinks once, twice, then shoves the phone into her blazer pocket.

“We had… an argument. Before all this. Actually the first real fight we’ve had since we’ve been dating.” Jemma pauses. Dating sounds like such an awkward word for the way her soul is tied up in his.

“But I hadn’t forgiven him yet, and I know he was calling to talk about it. I know he was frustrated. The last thing I ever said to him was… I have to live with that. But I don’t have to live with knowing that he…” Jemma wipes a sleeve across her eyes.

“You think one argument could possibly change how Fitz felt— _feels_ about you?” Daisy asks, incredulously.

“Perhaps not, but…”

“But nothing. Jemma, you didn’t see him when you were on Maveth. There’s nothing you could ever do that would make him stop loving you. Couples fight! That’s normal. Just because nothing else about our lives is normal doesn’t mean this isn’t.”  

“Everyone thinks he’s dead,” Jemma says, only partially accepting what Daisy tells her.

“What do you think? I’m following your lead.”

“You are? But why?” Jemma ducks her head, picking at a loose thread on her pants. “Everyone else thinks I can’t be objective.”

Daisy bites her lip. “That’s probably true. But you’re also the smartest person I know. If you think there’s a chance then… I’m following you.”

Jemma leans back against the wall, hands empty until Daisy reaches for her. She practices breathing until she can do it without concentrating. “I think there’s a good chance none of them are dead. We hardly understand what Eli did, but they can’t have just disappeared. If I’m wrong though… if I’m wrong, these voicemails are the last things I have from Fitz. And I’m not ready for that.”

Daisy nods and gives her fingers an encouraging squeeze. “Do you want me to listen to them for you?”

Jemma pulls out her phone again, seeing only the icon that has become both her talisman and her curse. “Maybe. Not right now though.”

“Okay,” Daisy says, pushing herself to her feet and not even flinching at the use of her battered arms. “Let’s get started then. Where to first, boss?”

++

_“Hi, mum. I know it’s been awhile. Things have been… well, it’s hard to explain. I just thought I’d like to hear your voice._

_I can’t really talk about it but I’m… scared. I’m really really scared._

_I’m sorry to worry you. I promise I’m okay. Please call me back when you can.”_

++

Jemma sprawls out on the hardwood floor, not noticing her own discomfort. She should buy a rug. She will, eventually, when she can get up.

Lying on painfully hard ground, a cardigan as a makeshift pillow, holding her phone and speaking to a picture of Fitz—it’s almost comforting to know she’s wound up back inside her own personal hell. After all, they found their way back to each other last time.

She listens to the first voicemail, finally, and it’s like someone has torn apart her insides and put the remains back in the wrong place.

This is how her world ends: with a sore back and a tinny voice and a conversation unfinished.

++

_“Jemma, please call me back, dear. I know you’re busy but you’re worrying me. Is this… is this about Leo? I spoke with Linda yesterday. She said she hasn’t heard from him in weeks and he had been calling more often lately. She said she can’t reach you either and it’s not like you._

_Just let me know that you’re both all right, love.”_

++

“We’ve survived worse,” Jemma tells May without looking at her. She jabs in her passcode to authorize another purchase. She’s gotten Daisy to hack the system to bypass her normal budget limitations and she wonders how long it will take before Mace notices and shuts her down.

“I know,” May says.

“It’s only been a month, and we’re making excellent progress,” Jemma adds, smiling brightly. Her words taste like copper in her mouth. _A team that trusts is a team that triumphs._

“I know,” May says.

“Really, we’re so close. I’m heading to Radcliffe’s as soon as I’m finished here. I think we’re on the verge, May.” Jemma picks up her phone from the desk, her smile cracking when she sees the missed call from her mother and her voicemail notifications ticking back up.

“I’m scared, too,” May says, and she catches the phone as it slips through Jemma’s fingers.

++

When Jemma listens to his second voicemail, she is angry. Angry that she’d been essentially kidnapped by her own employer. Angry that Fitz assumed she was ignoring him out of spite. Angry, mostly, that she actually might have ignored his calls if given the choice.

 _Please, it won’t happen again_ , she begs. _Give me one more chance and I’ll never let us leave on bad terms ever again_.

She says none of this aloud.

“She’s like a machine,” one of the lab techs whispers when she’s stepped out into the hallway to choke down the bile, the door still open beside her. “Do you think she even really cares that he’s gone?”

When Jemma tells Daisy what she’d overheard, vibrations make the silverware on the table shake. Jemma looks up at her friend in alarm.

“I’m sorry,” Daisy says, although she seems pleased that the action hadn’t hurt. “It’s been a long time since it’s happened unconsciously. But I was just… I’m so _angry_ and I’m so sorry. Who the fuck does he think he is?”

Jemma smiles at her, letting Daisy’s anger settle within herself until it pulses with her own rage. She can use it later.

++

Jemma is not all right, but Agent Simmons uses everything within her arsenal. Mace might be indestructible, but he flinches before her.

Sometimes, she thinks he still feels guilty at not letting her make one last phone call, at being the one to deliver the news. He lets her get away with more than he should because of it.

She doesn’t care.

++

_“Agent Simmons, it’s Mace. There’s been a development on the Nadeer front. I know I authorized some additional leave time, but I need you back here ASAP._

_Jemma… I’m so sorry, but you’re going to need to make a decision now. We can’t continue like this. This isn’t how a team should operate.”_

++

She listens to his third and fourth voicemails on a continual loop. She smiles when he curses and cries when he says he loves her. She grins when he mentions Peggy Carter and sobs when he says he loves her.

He’d apologized though, and his voice had been morning-after soft, and she can’t even remember why she’d been afraid of anything he might say to her. They’ve loved each other for half their lives. She has been incredibly lucky to fall in love with her best friend and she’s learning that it’s okay to accept her own happiness. She will tell him this when she finds him.

This is how her world ends: with bureaucracy shutting down her leads and orders to let go and a voice she hears in both her daydreams and her nightmares.

++

In the end, her team trusts her and they do triumph after all. Everything comes together beautifully. Or as beautifully as can be expected when her brilliant plan included potentially sacrificing herself. That’s a conversation she would normally dread having with Fitz, but she doesn’t think she’ll have the capacity to dread talking with him ever again.

She doesn’t care if Mace ends up sacking her. She doesn’t care that she’s broken more rules than she ever has in her life.

“I don’t believe it,” Mack whispers, tearing up as he watches the video feed. “It’s a miracle.”

“It’s science, Mack,” she says and she laughs because he doesn’t believe her and she can’t wait to tell Fitz.

When they get him back and he’s solid beneath her fists, when she has kissed him and drawn promises from his lips that he can’t keep, when she has spent hours testing him and then hours loving him, when they have fallen asleep together in their bed and she wakes up after thirty minutes to reassure herself he’s still there—

Only then does she listen to his final voicemail.

She thinks this is how, someday, her world will end: with Fitz and Fitz and _Fitz_.


End file.
